[Max Haller]

Can you just animate them both with a slider control? Have that increase the source text and the use it for the path end?

[Max Haller]

I guess its too late to help with this project, but here’s a link to a post about an expression you can apply to a slider control to switch which null a layer is parented to. https://forums.creativecow.net/docs/forums/post.php?forumid=227&postid=24028&univpostid=24028&pview=t

something like this might help if anyone else is looking for a way to switch parented nulls. I don’t think it literally changes the parent property of a layer but you can switch the null it’s taking the position/rotation/scale values from which is essentially the same idea.

[Max Haller]

Have you tried just garbage masking off the top where the arms hang in to frame and luma keying the white background out. Maybe you can increase the contrast or play with levels first, precomp and it key that to get a matte? Worth trying before you roto the whole thing.

[Max Haller]

An easier way to change those keyframes is to just select any layer with an effect/ changed property and click the “U” key on your keyboard. Pressing it once shows properties with keyframes, and pressing it twice shows all changed properties i believe. this way you dont need to manually go through a dozen drop menus.

[Max Haller]

Ive used a script called FreqReact from https://davey.studio/react/ to do something very similar to what you’re describing.

[Max Haller]

Kalleheikki’s way will work! If you have a lot left to do you may be interested in checking out a script called type monkey. I haven’t used this script personally but I hear good things about it for typography work : https://aescripts.com/typemonkey/

You might want to give it a try if you a lot of work left to do on that project.

[Max Haller]

I’m no expert on color spaces but that sounds like its working as it should Philip. 32 bit has a lot more color information available than 8 or 16 bit so that’s why you can set those values so high. You’ll get the most use out of it when you’re dealing with feathered edges and blended colors. Or effects like blurs and glows, or blending layer modes/messing with lighting.

Can you post screenshots of the difference in the windows that you’re talking about? I work on mac and windows quite often and i’m not sure what you mean by not getting usable information.

[Max Haller]

Eric’s right doing it in AE is a PITA. I had to do something similar for a digital series once though. This is from a long time ago so it might not be the most efficient way but it worked for me. This way your don’t have to use a source at rect expression and its all done on one layer.

On your text layer do the following:

Fast box blur until the letters are pretty blurry, Add a fill effect to fill your background color.

Add a curves effect and go to the alpha channel and crank it all the way up. Now you should see the entire bounding box of the text layer is solid and filled to the color in the fill effect.

Now add a CC composite effect and set the composite original to In Front. That should put your original text in front of the filled area.

You can animate it on however you need and the fill should respond. I used linear wipe.

[Max Haller]

Ambient light can be thought of like daylight if you’re outside. It just increases the amount of light in the over all scene. So you would generally use it to make the whole scene brighter and use spot or point lights to light specific areas of the scene/ cast shadows. Those type of lights have position and rotation values like you’d expect.

[Max Haller]

I’m pretty sure there’s an option to set which type of interpolation you want by default too. Don’t remember the exact steps but you might want to look into it if it’s something you’re changing a lot